Our last day in Paris. We had already done so much, that we didn't exactly know what we should do on our last day, so we turned to Frommer's. I did know that I wanted to see the Moulin Rouge, not a show or anything, I just wanted to see the windmill in person. Other than that, not much as far as plans. Jason found a place he thought he wanted to go, it was just a nice neighborhood that apparently had good shopping. Check-out was noon, but they could hold on to our bags, so we checked-out around 1100 hours and got directions to the Moulin Rouge. Actually, that neighborhood was where our concierge told us to go, Montemarte. It also is where a huge basilica is, apparently a place we shouldn't go home without seeing.
When we got there, the basilica was huge. It was built up on a hill and there were tons of steps to get up to the entrance. We weren't allowed to take pictures, so I will try to paint a picture with words. The basilica was huge. It had the typical cathedral design, with multiple altars along the sides. It also had a giant dome, it actually most closely resembles St. Peter's Basilica, but not as large as St. Peter's of course. Huge paintings filled the walls, and stained-glass windows brought in beautiful light through their stories. The organ was not very beautiful, but I'm sure the music it makes pleases Yahweh's ears, which is what matters.
As we walked around the church we found a public toilet or as they say, a Water Closet. It was horrible. After each use it automatically cleans itself , which basically consists of water spraying everything down, so everything is wet when you go in to use it. But Jason and I both needed to pee, so we made sure not to touch anything. Even without touching anything we felt dirty and tried to wash our hands with water from a spicket. A nice lady who was washing her hands with hand sanitizer spotted us and asked if we wanted to use some as well, we gladly accepted.
Then, we walked through some tourist shops, trying to find a place to eat, and found a place run by Asians where we got quiche. It was actually quite good, but the service sucked. After our quiche, we went to a different place and got beef bourguignon. The bourguignon was very strongly flavored with red wine, a bit too strong. We got some more souvenirs after eating, then headed towards the Moulin Rouge.
When we got to the Moulin Rouge it was neat to finally see it in person. It was definitely situated in a seedy part of town. Sex shops lined the street, places with names like Pussy's. We read the history of Moulin Rouge and took a ton of pictures before going back to our hotel. It was a good last day already.
We made it back to the hotel before we needed to catch a cab to the train station, so we walked around our neighborhood a bit and found a mall. There was a grocery store in the mall and the first thing we noticed was an orange juice machine. You just put the oranges in and it squeezed them and gave you fresh squeezed orange juice. We made a bottle, mostly because we thought it looked super cool and wanted to see how it worked. It was really delicious, so we were glad we did. We also got grapes and raspberries; we had to weigh the grapes and print out a price tag for them, which was really neat and would save time at the checkout line if we did it that way here. Then, we saw a loaf of bread for .49 Euros, but it wasn't labeled and we thought we must need to put a label on it. I tried to ask the cheese lady about it, but she thought I was asking her to cut it for us, so we ended up having our bread ready to make a sandwich with. It was a happy miscommunication. So, we got some ham and cheese as well and figured we would have a nice little picnic on the train.
When we got to the train, everything was messed up. The trolley we were supposed to be on was broken, so they put us on one that was supposed to sleep 6 instead of 2. Awesome, 6 twin beds, how were we supposed to cuddle.
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